Hey Richard. I'm glad you've got it sort of working! When you say slews to horizontal, do you mean the RA axis? If so, that's working as expected. The Dec axis should also be pointing straight up so your telescope is at zenith. Is that happening too?
Yes, clutches are locked, prior to trying to slew to zenith I was driving around a bit.
Yes Wilco, it's unparked (or it wouldn't move at all ). It's connected via NINA, using the Green Swamp Server driver. I'm not panicking over the zenith thing yet as it's got to be something fairly simple as everything else appears to be working. I'll check the GSS settings again too, there's just so many things to get right in these programmes.
I'm in awe that people can make these complex programmes and then make them freely available! Incredible bit of work.
Edit: a couple of hours later, after fiddling around, it's now working and slewing to zenith. I'm not sure what I did () but I suspect it was setting the home position. Between GSS and NINA there's lots to play with. Now to get onto the camera settings.
Thanks mate, it doesn't help that I'm completely new to all this astro stuff. If you stop and think about it, it's pretty amazing just what this software can do. It looks like there is a problem with the Skywatcher driver but it doesn't matter as it's sorted.
I just wish my other laptop issue was as simple, it looks like I'm going to have to re-install W10!
Hi Richard,
It really doesn't get that much easier so don't be hard on yourself. Every time I got a new piece of equipment or decided to trial a new piece of software I ended up spending most of the night troubleshooting and tinkering. It's part of the hobby and certainly a huge barrier to entry. Good thing you enjoy a challenge
Dan
Just when I thought I was getting NINA sussed out....... My new 80mm/F7 arrived so figured I'd mess around with it and the camera to get a feel for it during the daytime. The camera is an SVBony S305pro, basically a planetary/guiding thingy with usb3. I could not seem get an image in NINA so switched to Sharpcap and after much faffing around with extender tubes and a diagonal finally got an image. Leaving the scope alone I switched back to NINA and while I finally got an image it was very dark. The only adjustment I had was gain but that did nothing until I reached the point where it was too much.
Sharpcap gives access to all the settings in the camera - gain, saturation, gamma, contrast, white balance etc - but NINA doesn't, so it looks like I'll have to use Sharpcap.
I suppose another option will be to get a guidescope, use the camera as a guider (seems a bit of overkill) and use my Canon.
Just when I thought I was getting NINA sussed out....... My new 80mm/F7 arrived so figured I'd mess around with it and the camera to get a feel for it during the daytime. The camera is an SVBony S305pro, basically a planetary/guiding thingy with usb3. I could not seem get an image in NINA so switched to Sharpcap and after much faffing around with extender tubes and a diagonal finally got an image. Leaving the scope alone I switched back to NINA and while I finally got an image it was very dark. The only adjustment I had was gain but that did nothing until I reached the point where it was too much.
Sharpcap gives access to all the settings in the camera - gain, saturation, gamma, contrast, white balance etc - but NINA doesn't, so it looks like I'll have to use Sharpcap.
I suppose another option will be to get a guidescope, use the camera as a guider (seems a bit of overkill) and use my Canon.
All this is giving my braincells conniptions!
Saturation, contrast, gamma and WB are not really functions of a RAW image. That's post-processing. Gain is all you need. The rest is editing.
If you're pushing it in Sharpcap, it sounds like your raw image there isn't great either.
Extenders necessitate longer subs, btw.
Have you checked your camera & image options?
Options->Equipment->Camera
Options->Imaging->Image Options:
The advanced section lets you tweak the auto stretch
All I'm trying to do at the moment is get a live image so that I can get an idea of what's working. The default image in Sharpcap is fine without needing any tweaking, I only mentioned the availability of the settings to highlight the apparent difference between the two programmes with this camera. The image in NINA is dark, barely discernible.
I've been through every menu/setting I can find in NINA and there's nothing that helps. I started off using the ASCOM drivers but that caused issues, searching the 'net I found that the native SVBony drivers were recommended so that is what I'm using.
More experimenting needed, until I can get a reasonable image in daylight there's no way I'll be wasting time trying to use it at night (mind you, with all the cloud around that's not really an issue ).
Just finished another frustrating couple of hours with this issue. Wilco, I don't recall seeing auto-stretching in any of the menus?
Anyhow, for that to work I need an image and I can't even get that now!
Started off getting a visual image in the scope, then ran Sharpcap and got the focus right with the camera, the image looked pretty good.
Closed Sharpcap, opened NINA, connected camera and scope and got an image but it was dark and grainy. Fiddling around with the gain settings didn't help. Went through every menu I could find in NINA but there were minimal camera settings available.
This was using the native camera driver so I decided to re-connect the camera using the ASCOM driver. The camera connected but when I went to imaging nothing happened, the stats window showed nothing and I could not initiate an image. Bugger.
Re-connected with the native driver but now had the same issue with the imaging window, no stats and no image!!!
Closed it all down and went back to Sharpcap, no problems the camera was working fine.
Back into NINA, still no image.
Ok, re-install the native driver, makes no difference.
Ok, delete NINA and reinstall it. Nope, still nothing in imaging. NINA recognises the camera, connects ok with no error messages - but nothing in imaging.
Just finished another frustrating couple of hours with this issue. Wilco, I don't recall seeing auto-stretching in any of the menus?
John already mentioned it above. Here is what was said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by oska
Have you checked your camera & image options?
Options->Equipment->Camera
Options->Imaging->Image Options:
The advanced section lets you tweak the auto stretch
Camera is connected to NINA: perfect.
Are you in focus?
Are you using a filter?
How long is you exposure?
Did you use the Imaging tab to take an image?
I think that SharpCap start shooting image the moment you select your camera from memory.
NINA you have to tell it to take an image.
And there is the problem, in imaging there was a setting to loop the image but that is no longer there so I can't initiate an image. I'm perplexed why these settings are no longer shown, they used to be there.
Yes, clutches are locked, prior to trying to slew to zenith I was driving around a bit.
). It's connected via NINA, using the Green Swamp Server driver. I'm not panicking over the zenith thing yet as it's got to be something fairly simple as everything else appears to be working. I'll check the GSS settings again too, there's just so many things to get right in these programmes.
) but I suspect it was setting the home position. Between GSS and NINA there's lots to play with. Now to get onto the camera settings.
